Christopher Borick: The 2012 election will change politics in 2013 and beyond

President Obama speaks during a rally at Carnegie Mellon University in… (JIM WATSON, AFP/Getty Images )

January 01, 2013

With 2012 left for historians to dissect and 2013 providing fodder for prognosticators of many sorts, it seems like the perfect time to examine what last year tells us about both the current state of affairs in American and Pennsylvania politics and the emerging trends shaping the political world in 2013 and beyond.

The election of 2012 will be remembered for the role that the nation's changing demographics played in determining the presidential race. As the nation has become more racially diverse, the shape of the electorate followed, and in 2012 it made all the difference. Racial minorities made up 28 percent of the electorate last November and broke overwhelmingly for President Obama. Mitt Romney won six out of every 10 white voters, which is just about the same George H.W. Bush won in his landslide win in 1988. The problem for Romney is that in 2012 winning six out of 10 white voters didn't produce anything close to a landslide victory. Moving forward Republicans must make inroads among the nation's growing number of Latino and Asian voters or risk reliving the disappointment of 2012.

The election of 2012 should also put the death nail in Pennsylvania's cherished status as a "swing sate." With Democrats chalking up their sixth straight victory in the state, it's time to admit that the Keystone State is no longer a pivotal battleground in presidential races. The lack of campaign activity this fall should have convinced us that we were no longer considered a competitive state by the campaigns. A Republican nominee can still win the state's electoral votes in future elections, but if that happens it is likely that a landslide has occurred and that Pennsylvania's electoral bounty was just helping to run up the score.

Interestingly the GOP's lack of success in presidential races in Pennsylvania has led some in Harrisburg to consider changing the way we distribute our electoral votes. State Sen. Dominick Pileggi's plan to apportion electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in the state may give Republicans in the commonwealth something to hope for in future elections but would do nothing to make the state any more attractive to presidential campaigns. This would be the case because the proportion of votes that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates get in the state changes very little from year to year, thus the electoral vote distribution would look roughly the same from election to election.

One thing that 2012 reminded us was that competition in Pennsylvania congressional districts is all but extinct. Due to some really egregious gerrymandering by the state Legislature, only one of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts had a race where the winning margin was less than 10 percent. The design of congressional districts is fueling the hyperpartisanship that is engulfing Washington and helping to produce the dysfunction permeating the nation's capital. Look for members of Congress to spend more time looking over their shoulders for primary challenges from the extreme wings of their parties than worrying about threats from challengers from the other party.

The historic victory of Kathleen Kane — to become both the first woman and first Democrat to be elected attorney general in Pennsylvania — could be a harbinger of things to come. First, her victory may help open the door for female candidates to finally establish a more prominent role in Pennsylvania politics. For a state that never had a female governor or U.S. senator and that has only one female member in its congressional delegation, it seems that Pennsylvania is long overdue for women to establish a larger presence on the political scene here.

Second, Kane's victory was aided by public discontent with the investigation of the Jerry Sandusky case and public concern about Gov. Corbett's role in it. This issue is sure to follow him into his re-election bid as Kane shines a spotlight on the matter. The governor enters the final two years of his term with troubling job approval ratings and tough decisions to make regarding difficult problems, such as transportation infrastructure repair and public employee pension solvency. Addressing these matters may require Corbett to spend quite a bit of political capital as he looks toward re-election in 2014. Early interest in challenging him from Democrats and Republicans provides evidence that he has work to do in 2013 if he is to win a second term in 2014.

Politics is a forward-looking enterprise, and it's easy to quickly forget about past elections. But as we look to 2013 and beyond, many important lessons can be learned from the 2012 elections. Those results will have a lasting effect on the way politics is practiced in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation for many years to come.

Christopher P. Borick is professor of political science at Muhlenberg College and director of the school's Institute of Public Opinion.